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tags:eroteticslinguisticsphilosophy
Explanation, Theory, Linguistics and How Questions Shape Them
We find ourselves, as individuals and as communities, willy-nilly cast in a world not of our own making, in which we want to survive if possible to thrive, and whose features we want to understand. We start out with little prior information about that world, but we are endowed the with ability to come to know that there are things about it that we don’t know, that is, the ability to formulate and entertain questions whose answers we know we do not know.
An Approach to Explanation
The word explanation occurs so continuously and has so important a place in philosophy, that a little time spent in fixing the meaning of it will be profitably employed. - JS Mill
What are these truth-conditions? Most matters proposed up to now strike me as missing the heart of the matter, or as being at best about quasi-technical homonyms of “to explain.”
Indirect
Indirect question is the grammarian’s name for a modification of what was originally a question, such that it does not stand by itself as a sentence, but is treated as a noun serving, for instance, as subject or object to a verb outside of it. Thus the direct question who are you? indirect question, I asked who he was…”
What is the for someone to explain something to someone, where the “something” can be specified by means of indirection question. What are the truth-conditions common to such statements as “John is explaining to Rosalie how ozone differs from ordinary oxygen”
“A explained to B W” form = “explaining episodes” with A the tutor, and B the tutee” and W the explained.
Hypothesis 1 A statement in the form of A explained to B W is true, iff an episode has occured
- at the beginning of which the tutee did not know the right answer to the question
- in the course of which the tutor presents to the tutee all of the fact that h, the tutee must know to know the right answer to the question
- at the end of which the tutor has presented all of the facts mentioned in the second bullet.
- at the end of which the tutee knows the right answer to the question
we eliminate the first two bullet points for refined
- in the course of the episode, the tutor presents the facts one must know to know the right answer to the question.
- at the end of the episode, the tutor has presented all of the facts mentioned in the prior bullet.
Theory of theories
The theory of theories - if there can be such a thing - must provide a set of abstract concepts that are exemplified in all theories. In light of these concepts, any theory should come in to be seen as mirroring the features found in every theory. Furthermore, these concepts should enable us to formulate principles and to raise questions that pertain to any and all theories.
Takes three texts: “I look upon each of these texts as an instance of a type, and I think of the type as identified by the didactic promises to which its instances lend themselves. Any text can lend itself to more than on didactic promise.”
Why Questions
Why-questions in normal form
- begins with the word why
- the remainder of the sentence has the surface structure of an interrogative sentence designed to ask a whether question, that is a question with an answer “yes” or “no”
- the sentence contains no parenthetical verbs